AUGUSTA, Maine — President Joe Biden is nominating a Portland attorney and former federal prosecutor to become a U.S. District Court judge in Maine.
If confirmed, Stacey D. Neumann will fill the District of Maine position that is opening due to U.S. District Judge Jon Levy retiring and taking senior status starting May 6.
The White House announced Wednesday that Biden intends to nominate Neumann, who has worked in private practice at Murray, Plumb & Murray in Portland since 2013, and six others to U.S. District Court seats around the country. That will bring the Democratic president’s federal judicial nominee count to 236 since he took office in 2021.
The White House called Neumann and all of the latest nominees “extraordinarily qualified, experienced and devoted to the rule of law and our Constitution.”
Neumann’s areas of focus include state and federal cases related to criminal defense, employment law, civil rights and collegiate disciplinary processes, such as Title IX investigations, according to her biography on her Portland firm’s website.
She served as a special assistant and then assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Maine from 2009 to 2013. Before that, she was a staff attorney in Vermont’s public defender office and served as a clerk for federal appellate and Vermont Supreme Court judges.
Neumann also serves on numerous panels, such as the United States Sentencing Commission’s Practitioners Advisory Group. She was on the volunteer-run oversight board for Long Creek Youth Development Center before then-Gov. Paul LePage denied in 2017 her and other members’ applications to serve a second three-year term, a move the members described as retribution after they reported a young inmate’s suicide attempt to lawmakers and its place in a pattern of self-inflicted violence at the troubled youth prison.
Neumann graduated from Cornell Law School in 2005 after receiving a bachelor’s degree from James Madison University in 2000. Levy had been the chief U.S. District Court judge in Maine and was nominated to the bench by former President Barack Obama in 2013.
The two other U.S. District Court judges in Maine, which has federal courthouses in Portland and Bangor, are Nancy Torreson and Lance Walker, who replaced Levy as the chief judge. Active senior judges, who handle smaller caseloads, are John Woodcock Jr. and George Singal.
